In four years Hugh had eighteen machines, at each of which a skilled woman sat; and he hired young girls to sew through buttons and hook-and-eyes and to make button-holes.  These women and girls were under the hand of Millie, who kept count of their comings and goings and the work they performed, holding from their wages the value of the material they spoilt and of the minutes they were not at their task.  Millie labored faithfully, her heart being perfect with her husband’s.  She and Hugh slept in the kitchen, for all the other rooms were stockrooms or workrooms; and the name by which the concern was called was “The French Model Blouse Co.  Manageress—­Mme. Zetta, the notorious French Modiste.”

Howsoever bitterly people were pressed, Hugh did not cease to prosper.  In riches, honor, and respect he passed many of the London Welsh.

For that he could not provide all the blouses that were requested of him, he rented a big house.  That hour men were arrived to take thereto his belongings, Millie said:  “I’ll throw the Paisley shawl over my arm.  I wouldn’t lose it for anything”; and as she moved away the ten-pound note fell on the ground.  “Well, I never!” she cried in her dismay.  “It was there all the time.”

Hugh seized the note from her hand.

“You’ve the head of a sieve,” he said.  Also he lamented:  “All these years we had no interest in him.”

XIII

PROFIT AND GLORY

By serving in shops, by drinking himself drunk, and by shamming good fortune, Jacob Griffiths gave testimony to the miseries and joys of life, and at the age of fifty-six he fell back in his bed at his lodging-house in Clapham, suffered, drew up his crippled knees and died.  On the morrow his brother Simon hastened to the house; and as he neared the place he looked up and beheld his sisters Annie and Jane fach also hurrying thither.  Presently they three saw one another as with a single eye, wherefore they slackened their pace and walked with seemliness to the door.  Jacob’s body was on a narrow, disordered bed, and in the state of its deliverance:  its eyes were aghast and its hands were clenched in deathful pangs.

Then Simon bowed his trunk and lifted his silk hat and his umbrella in the manner of a preacher giving a blessing.

“Of us family it can be claimed,” he pronounced, “that even the Angel do not break us.  We must all cross Jordan.  Some go with boats and bridges.  Some swim.  Some bridges charge a toll—­one penny and two pennies.  A toll there is to cross Jordan.”

“He’ll be better when he’s washed and laid out proper,” remarked the woman of the lodging-house.

“Let down your apron from your head,” Simon said to her.  “We are mourning for our brother, the son of the similar father and mother.  You don’t think me insulting if I was alone with the corpse.  I shan’t be long at my religious performance.  I am a busy man like you.”